The tragic death of Olive Cooke was a defining moment for the sector and everyone involved in running a charity is responsible for addressing the issues, says Andrew Hind.
The apparent suicide of 92-year-old Bristol poppy-seller Olive Cooke occurred only six weeks ago, but it can already be seen as a defining moment in the history of charity fundraising and its regulation in the UK.
Olive Cooke’s family have made it clear that although she received more than 260 letters a month from charities asking for money, charities were not responsible for her death as some newspapers initially alleged.
Nevertheless the episode has touched a nerve with the public, with many people clearly feeling that charities are putting too much pressure on individuals to donate.
Perhaps the most tangible evidence of this is that more than 30,000 people downloaded a pro-forma letter from the BBC’s The One Show within two days in June, demanding that charities “stop sending me marketing material or contacting me for marketing purposes by letter, phone or email”.
Almost everyone has anecdotal evidence of friends or relatives who have been irritated – or even worse, left feeling guilty and upset – by cold calls received at home, having unwanted and unasked-for gifts in the post from charities, or discovering that a charity they already support has made their personal details available to others.
We appear to be at a tipping point, where current fundraising practices seriously risk damaging the trust and respect that most people still retain for charities. There are parallels here with ‘trigger points’ that have led to wholesale reform in other sectors in recent years.
For instance, the tragic deaths of up to 1,000 patients at Stafford hospital between 2005 and 2008 unleashed a wave of public concern that had been bubbling under the surface about the growing inadequacy of clinical care in hospitals.
A public inquiry, chaired by Robert Francis QC, subsequently led to fundamental reforms to professional healthcare regulation. Another example is the MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009, with its duck house and second-home ‘flipping’, which aroused widespread public anger.
It led to the abolition of self-regulation by MPs of their own finances, and the creation of a statutorily imposed regulatory framework overseen by the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
In both these cases the stable door was metaphorically shut after the horse had bolted – public trust in NHS hospitals and in MPs was seriously damaged, perhaps irreversibly, and the events that followed were effectively an exercise in damage limitation. Following Olive Cooke’s death, the three bodies charged with regulating UK fundraising – the Fundraising Standards Board, the Institute of Fundraising and the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association – appear to recognise the gravity of the situation and have issued a joint statement promising “more robust” regulation.
Primary responsibility
But the primary responsibility for ensuring that donors don’t feel ‘hounded’ by contemporary fundraising practices rests not with regulators and umbrella bodies but with charities themselves. And that doesn’t just mean the buck stops with fundraising directors.
It’s time for the boards and senior management teams of every charity engaging in fundraising to ask themselves one simple question: ‘Do we understand exactly what fundraising approaches are being made to members of the public in our name; and are we completely satisfied that they are consistent with our values as a charity?’
I suspect that the answer to this question will, in many cases, be ‘no’. In which case, the solution to the problem is not difficult to identify.
